Recently, a Moscow court handed a win to Russian security forces. In an effort to combat terrorism, they announced Telegram would be banned immediately. The company refused to hand over user information. A day after the ban going into effect, CEO Pavel Durov announced Telegram would use bitcoin to fund proxies and VPNs as possible workarounds for Russian customers.

Telegram Remains Defiant

Pavel Durov’s Telegram channel followers were pinged early this morning, explaining “For the last 24 hours Telegram has been under a ban by internet providers in Russia. The reason is our refusal to provide encryption keys to Russian security agencies. For us, this was an easy decision. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise,” the company’s CEO stressed.

Telegram has been in conflict with its native government, Russia, for quite some time. The encrypted messaging service is often used all over the world’s for those seeking relative levels of privacy. In fact, it’s a known source of communication for much of the Middle East and those under rather oppressive political arrangements.

As a result, Russia points to various terrorist acts on its soil, and around the globe, where Telegram has been accused of playing a role. And so its security and communication agencies have demanded Telegram provide a way for government minders to access user information in at least the most criminal of cases

Bitcoin Used to Digital Resistance

Mr. Durov has outright refused, even holding back participation in this final hearing on the company’s immediate fate in the country. “Despite the ban,” Mr. Pavel continued this morning, “we haven’t seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for our users there.”

“Russia accounts for ~7% of the Telegram user base, and even if we lose that entire market, Telegram’s organic growth in other regions will compensate for this loss within a couple of months,” Mr. Durov stressed. “However, it is important for me personally to make sure we do everything we can for our Russian users.”

That necessarily means workarounds. As Mr. Durov urges, “To support internet freedoms in Russia and elsewhere I started giving out bitcoin grants to individuals and companies who run socks5 proxies and VPN. I am happy to donate millions of dollars this year to this cause, and hope that other people will follow. I called this Digital Resistance – a decentralized movement standing for digital freedoms and progress globally.”

Russia seems to be getting a taste of its own medicine. Russia wanted to use cryptocurrencies to fight sanctions imposed on it by the Western world. Telegram has shown that cryptocurrencies can be used to fight governments as well. In this case, funding VPNs won’t damage the Russian government, it will just irritate it.

Russia seems to be getting a taste of its own medicine. Russia wanted to use cryptocurrencies to fight sanctions imposed on it by the Western world. Telegram has shown that cryptocurrencies can be used to fight governments as well. In this case, funding VPNs won’t damage the Russian government, it will just irritate it.

I do agree with the need to resist the Russian government move to interfere with a communication tool like Telegram on the basis that they are suspecting terrorism-related activities being conducted using Telegram. I do believe that there is no need for the government to control Telegram instead they should be working with Telegram on this matter...the problem is that there is a strong tendency for the Russian government to shortcut things and imposed its will without proper consultation and collaboration. Maybe authorities there are just following the leadership style of its main leader. I am wondering if this resistance movement from Telegram can be helping the cause of Bitcoin or not...

Telegram is a centralised network with closed source software running on the servers.

I wouldn't take anyone (including any so-called journalists) hyping Telegram as some kind of "Digital Resistance", lol

The only p2p messenger network (+ fully open source) that exists today is Tox, Telegram is little different to Whatsapp or Signal

Agreed. Durov knows that the moment he hands over the keys his business is finished, so he's disguising his efforts as a "digital resistance" in an attempt to drum up support. I don't blame him though, what Russia is doing is unacceptable. It's not just telegram they're attacking either - Zello has also been targeted by Russia:

Millions of Google & Amazon server IP's are now blocked in Russia, with no sign of it stopping either.

Personally, I prefer Signal solely because it is OpenSource (Facebook own Whatapp - so it's a no-go for me), but as you say - it's still centralized so can fail. ATM Tox is the only secure answer & the only messenger app that can beat the Russian censorship machine.

Signal isn't controversy free, either. The source code is published, but others in the free software community (specifically the F-droid opensource app store) refused to endorse it, because they couldn't get the published source code to actually compile. Open source is no good if the only option is to trust pre-compiled binaries from the same people that publish code that won't compile, this kind of implies their compiled binaries are using different code to that which is published.

ATM Tox is the only secure answer & the only messenger app that can beat the Russian censorship machine.

Tox is the most advanced thing right now at least. Kind of surprising that it's taken so long for a serverless p2p messenging platform to be developed. Added bonus: Tox can beat censorship that's not Russian too

I'm watching this one closelyDurov announced that he would issue bitcoin grants to VPN and Proxy services that allow users to circumvent the restrictionsthen today russian goverment said that there will be no witch hunt after users who continue to download and use telegramthe whole thing comes to one point: Russia is concerned about the possible Orange revolution scenarios,similar to Arab springwhere the coordination was organised through the social media and messengersseeing that their country is under pressure now,I'm sure they will go through with the ban,even if Durov claims it is technically impossiblesecurity concerns are high,so ISP's and VPN services owners will be monitored closely and the only thing is clear-the user base will migrate to some different messengers eventually

Russia seems to be getting a taste of its own medicine. Russia wanted to use cryptocurrencies to fight sanctions imposed on it by the Western world. Telegram has shown that cryptocurrencies can be used to fight governments as well. In this case, funding VPNs won’t damage the Russian government, it will just irritate it.

that was the first thought I've came up with to be honest. Russian government is fighting with itself right now

I was reading about the various views by the Russians over this convoluted mess. There's another interesting angle to the story. The Russian government is only using terrorism as a tool to ban Telegram. Actual reason is the anonymous channel running on telegram which gives political news and make the major part of the Russian newspaper. Many Russians prefer Telegram channels instead of newspaper for the news. Russian government heavily manipulates the news whereas some anonymous and the most followed channels give the actual news with thorough analysis which is what government is afraid of and hence, this ban.

Russia seems to be getting a taste of its own medicine. Russia wanted to use cryptocurrencies to fight sanctions imposed on it by the Western world. Telegram has shown that cryptocurrencies can be used to fight governments as well. In this case, funding VPNs won’t damage the Russian government, it will just irritate it.

It's not precisely correct to say that Russia wanted to use cryptocurrencies, they were and probably still are sending mixed signals because different officials have different opinions, but I'd say they are leaning towards negative, because Putin basically said that blockchain is good and cryptocurrencies are bad because terrorism (seems like Russia uses terrorism as an excuse for every time they want to tighten their control over population). At this point I will not be surprised if Russia will just ban cryptocurrencies altogether, especially if it will continue to like you've said irritate them.

This once again proves that the current authoritarian government of Russia will not allow its citizens to freely engage in crypto currency. If they shut down any social networks that can not be fully controlled, they certainly will not give a crypto currency to people, either it and its owners will be under the full control of the special services, it will not be a crypto currency.

I'm watching this one closelyDurov announced that he would issue bitcoin grants to VPN and Proxy services that allow users to circumvent the restrictionsthen today russian goverment said that there will be no witch hunt after users who continue to download and use telegramthe whole thing comes to one point: Russia is concerned about the possible Orange revolution scenarios,similar to Arab springwhere the coordination was organised through the social media and messengersseeing that their country is under pressure now,I'm sure they will go through with the ban,even if Durov claims it is technically impossiblesecurity concerns are high,so ISP's and VPN services owners will be monitored closely and the only thing is clear-the user base will migrate to some different messengers eventually

Russian authorities wish to avoid orange revolution scenarios, of course, however they are able to supress any kind of rebel by military power, Putin has created his own troops so called Rosguardia (russian guards) for such scenario. They constantly fight for people's minds, they reqruit mercenaries among inspired spectators of a military parade, I have seen it by myself. They have created shitty TamTam, which is messenger similar to Telegram, to pull the blanket on themselves. However I doubt that Pavel Durov is fighting for people's privacy and freedom, if so then why Telegram application takes access to users IMEI, SMS, calls etc.?

I'm watching this one closelyDurov announced that he would issue bitcoin grants to VPN and Proxy services that allow users to circumvent the restrictionsthen today russian goverment said that there will be no witch hunt after users who continue to download and use telegramthe whole thing comes to one point: Russia is concerned about the possible Orange revolution scenarios,similar to Arab springwhere the coordination was organised through the social media and messengersseeing that their country is under pressure now,I'm sure they will go through with the ban,even if Durov claims it is technically impossiblesecurity concerns are high,so ISP's and VPN services owners will be monitored closely and the only thing is clear-the user base will migrate to some different messengers eventually

Russian authorities wish to avoid orange revolution scenarios, of course, however they are able to supress any kind of rebel by military power, Putin has created his own troops so called Rosguardia (russian guards) for such scenario. They constantly fight for people's minds, they reqruit mercenaries among inspired spectators of a military parade, I have seen it by myself. They have created shitty TamTam, which is messenger similar to Telegram, to pull the blanket on themselves. However I doubt that Pavel Durov is fighting for people's privacy and freedom, if so then why Telegram application takes access to users IMEI, SMS, calls etc.?

if you believe that P.Durov is fighting for anything but his business and profits (or potentially,military agenices' contracts from the likes of ANB,CIA and such)you are grossly mistaken,people's freedom is a myth and a pretext to try and protect his 7%+ share of the audienceas for Russia supressing everything by military power,you have to understand how these revolutions workmilitary power means nothing if the ones who command it and I don't mean Putin or Shoigu heredo not respond to orders,they say generals in Iraq took 3 mil $ bribes and you can see the results yourself